


A Contagious Mad Sickness of Shadows

by MistyBeethoven



Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [68]
Category: Hamlet (RMTC 1995), Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Afterlife, BBW, Castles, Dead People, Death, F/M, Fire, For Keanu Reeves' Birthday, Friendship/Love, Ghosts, Heaven, Insanity, Inspired by Shakespeare, Loneliness, Love, Love Stories, Murder, Muteness, Overweight, Princes & Princesses, Purgatory, Question of sanity, Romance, Sadness, Self-Indulgent, Self-Insert, Servants, Shadows - Freeform, Soulmates, Supernatural Elements, Supernatural romance, Swords, Talking To Dead People, Tragedy, Witch Hunt, angry mobs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,445
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26169286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven
Summary: A young servant in the castle at Elsinore, where King Fortinbras reigns, I become fascinated with the tale of how a presumably mad young Prince Hamlet avenged his father's supposed murder at the hands of the man's own brother, Claudius.Alone, impoverished and seeing the world as bleak and without beauty, I find the grave of the Dane and discover his claim to have seen a ghost very real as Hamlet's own ghost begins to mutely haunt me at the gravesite, with my own consent and approval.However, as time wears on and my fellow servants at the castle begin to believe I have gone mad too, Hamlet at first leaves me and then returns with tragic consequences...
Relationships: Hamlet/Me, Hamlet/Ophelia (Hamlet)
Series: "Yes, I Really Am This Pathetic!" or "How to Say I Love You With a Story" [68]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1589944
Kudos: 3





	A Contagious Mad Sickness of Shadows

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Birthday Keanu! I was waiting to post this until it turned 12:00 here in Canada until I remembered you were born in Beirut, Lebanon! So I can post it now! Yay! :D <3
> 
> When I was deciding on a special fic to write in honor of your birthday, my mind rested on a role I knew meant a lot to you. I knew I couldn't watch you in it to write this but I do remember reading the articles about it in the Ottawa Citizen. I always read the Entertainment section before school. That and the funnies. And I just had to tackle Hamlet despite my not being able to ever see it.
> 
> What handling of the characters you played would be complete without one of the greatest of all time?
> 
> When I think of you portraying the Dane, I get so proud. I think of having to memorize all of those lines and lose it... :/ I'm glad you didn't! I know you were great and I wish I had been able to see it.
> 
> This story started off more austere and less romantic. It was a desert but turned out more like a jungle. The thought occurs to me that I might still tackle that desert someday because it could be beautiful too. But for today this seemed better. It is in part a Cinderella story because I heard both it and Hamlet are the two most frequently done stories and that made me laugh to combine them. It's just your basic Cinderella meets Hamlet story.
> 
> It's also a little bit like "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" and "Wuthering Heights" methinks.
> 
> Okay...more notes later...now onto the tale...

"They said it all happened because he had seen a ghost."

I was forgotten about on the floor of the kitchen, half listening to the women talk amongst themselves while I sat on my place on the ground, playing with the old, one-eyed cat that liked to roam about the castle and pretend that it belonged to him alone and that he merely suffered our presence. I had finished scrubbing the floor early, my hands raw from the constant friction of the stone floor breaking through my rags and cutting the skin on my palms and knuckles and my knees raw from this, aided by my constant movement around the kitchen floor. Blood was soaking into the old, dirt covered cloth grasped by fingers now claw like from being badly cramped and an inability to move them. I had been listening to two of the King's helpers, two women washing his food smeared dishes, conversing idly for the duration of my time scrubbing. But their words had never perched upon a topic that won my interest away from my work or pried it from the big, tatted fur cat of black, playing lazily with my finger, until they started to discuss the demise of the man whom had died in order for old King Fortinbras to take the throne for himself instead.

"Prince Hamlet had seen a ghost, you say? Here I thought he had gone mad!" the second woman, in her late thirties, thin as a broom made for sweeping and possessing eyes made hollow by tears and grieving for a string of men and children she would outlive.

"But he _had_ gone mad!" the first woman, wide of girth, such as myself but far more loud and bitter like gall, retaliated. "That was how they even further knew that he had been, over time when the truth was told by Hamlet's true friend, Horatio. The young Dane had thought the ghost belonging to his dead father had ordered he take revenge for his murder."

"Murder?"

"So Hamlet claimed or claimed the ghost to have claimed," the first woman spoke. "Says his uncle Claudius was bedding Queen Gertrude, herself, and desiring her under the sun ridden sky along with the crown that sat upon his brother's head. Killed King Hamlet, he did, to possess the both of them."

"Should have killed the younger Hamlet too then," the gaunt woman said, scrubbing away at the stubborn food clinging to the dish in her hand. "Didn't the Prince of Denmark end up killing him?"

"Yes...but not before he had left a rather bloody wake of destruction behind him. Hamlet killed Polonius, the father of the woman he had been courting. That same poor girl, Ophelia, went mad and drowned herself, not by accident, if you take my hint..."

"Self slaughter? Damnation!"

"Yes...Hamlet then had his former traitorous friends, Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, executed in his place when Claudius plotted to kill him with their assistance. When Laertes returned from France, he plotted with King Claudius to murder Hamlet during a duel but things fell apart. Getrude drank poisoined draught her husband intended for her son and Laertes might have killed his enemy but not before fate decreed Hamlet kill him as well. Infact, the one person the young Dane wanted to kill was the last person he actually did murder."

"What a _royal_ mess!" the woman of grief cried.

" _They_ seem to make the ones of most note," the teller of the tale replied before she caught me staring at them both.

"Hey! You've finished and have ears! You take over for us, girl. Sixteen and leaving us with work to slave away with! Come Hortense. We have been given time off."

I watched as the two women older then myself walked out of the kitchen, their laughter, reaching me still as I rose to my feet. Sighing, I looked down into the yellow, moon eyes of the old Tom. "I should have left when I had been forgotten."

It had been my poor choice to have found myself lingering to hear them tell of Prince Hamlet, the young man everyone whispered had gone crazy and murderous when they bothered to talk of him at all. I was new to the castle and had heard only mention of him here and there. Although I had once heard it told that Horatio had been instructed to stay alive and tell his tale, I thought sadly it had been for naught for the Dane's sake. Everybody believed him to be crazy still. If his act of insanity had been done in pretense it had worked too well and everybody was convinced of it more than talk of ghosts and their pleas for vengeance.

I, myself, would have fancied a good ghost.

Instead of turning to the basins and the towering and tottering pile of filthy dishes by their sides, I walked first to the blacony and looked upon the world outside of it before finishing up another's work. I thought of how dreary everything seemed, from the sky of constant gray to the color of the stones. Nothing seemed to please me now as it had in my youth. Forced to leave childhood behind, I found little to delight in the world of adults and their cruelty. Not that the children I had known had been much better. Looking down at the blood on the rags and on the dress of my skirt, I suddenly welcomed the red, for it brought with it some color into an other wise single shaded existence. The world seemed a Hell to me, devoid of warmth and kindness, where people were likely to only spit on you with ale were you to catch on fire.

* * *

On the grounds, free from scrubbing, I searched for the grave of the mad Prince whom had lived his life and found his death before I had been slapped by a stranger's hand to take my first breath. I stumbled upon the graves of two of his victims along the way, both uninentional, one from Hamlet's hand, the other the result merely of his actions. Reading the date written for Ophelia, I saw her to be my own age round about. Thinking of someone so young dying, I shivered as I paid her my respects before searching for her lover whom had helped drive her into a crazed condition by either feigning or actually suffering his own madness. I wondered if madness could be contagious then. Some strange illness always looking to make the next person suffer.

Finding the royal graveyard, I found the grave set to mark the resting place of Hamlet. It bore a tall marker, made of stone, inches shy of my own height with a dragon engraved on it with sword. The stone was old and covered with dirt, filth and growth. "Though you were rich and I poor, you have been forgotten and uncared for like I," I commented and sat on the ground by the grave, not caring if my dress became ruined for it had been close to that state from first I had put it on. On my own in Denmark, I was truly alone and lost. Any kindness I received from Fortinbras was due to need of an extra pair of hands and I was not looked on charitably in itself, my plump frame and lack of dowry and position not predisposing me to anyone's particular kindness. Maybe for this reason, I in turn wished to show the dead Prince my own act of charity so I used my skirt and spit to remove the moss and dirt a bit before sitting down again to sit and ponder for a space.

"Are you resting in peace?" I inquired of a man, whom could give me no answer. I felt a breeze blowing at the side of my neck and took it for a wind from the east. "Was there a ghost you saw of your father, the king?" I asked. "I would like to believe so," I said, clasping my hands on my lap. "It would please me to see thee not as mad but as sane and that the world merely treated thee with the same cold regard it does for all those closer to Heaven."

Two small breezes at my neck like large breaths. I fingered the skin there and felt moisture where the wind had touched and thought it strange.

* * *

For the following days, I often went to see the Dane's grave and I suddenly fancied inside of my head that he were there with me beneath the lighted sky. At different times during my one sided discourses with him, I felt small breezes on my neck as if in response. Always one was bestowed for a question seeming of no and two for one of yes. Commonly, I hugged my legs as I spoke to him about the day and its various delights or the wounds I had been given. I had no friends in the castle save for those which were covered in fur and walked on all fours and I found my existence a painful one.

Except for my visits to see my lost Prince.

"My sustenance as a child were the dreams of fairy stories; the tales of horrors mixed with great joys and where love was what was sought," I confessed one day. "I have not found my own love yet...Are you with your Ophelia?"

A single breeze on my neck.

Tears filled my eyes. "I am most grieved for thee," I whispered, and shivered as I believed to have felt something cold pass through me which had to be only a strange contagion inside of my mind.

"You know...sometimes I see the world only in shadows," I confessed. "Nothing belongs to me and there is little inside of it that brings me joy. It remains weary, flat and stale."

I felt my breath almost being stolen as the same sensation of being passed through occurred once more. "If only _you_ could be my love," I asked softly when the air returned to my lungs. "Until a time where God's mercies extend to reuniting you with your poor drowned maiden and I find my own Prince instead of taking another's."

Two breaths to make the hair on the back of my neck stand up, while my heart began a feverish beating.

I had gone mad after all, it seemed, for I was ready to take an imagined ghost for my lover.

* * *

The next day, I could not visit my tombstone for a lover while the sun was in its sky of gray. Though I was close to death from weariness, I could not help but grab a lantern and waste one of the King's candles by avoiding the guards to sneak to Hamlet's grave under the covert night. When I neared it, I thought someone had beat me to the place, their lantern far stronger than my own and giving off a glow both bright and eerie. It was as if a bit of the moon had fallen from the sky to land on the ground and make it less seem of shadows to me. Jealousy seized me at first that some other soul was visiting my mad, Danish Prince, followed by the swift fear that his grave was instead being robbed, until I gasped and realized that it was no stranger baring a lantern.

The man by the grave of Hamlet _was_ the lantern himself.

Though my brain urged me to run and save my life, my feet remained in place, fascinated by the man made of phosperous, of blue fire and unearthly glow. When I turned and walked closer to him, some large insect drawn to the light in the darkness, the stranger turned around to see me and I dropped the lantern, knowing that a stranger he could not be also for I had seen his likeness captured on canvas often in certain rooms inside of the castle. It was my Prince, the dark and brooding Dane whom had lost his mind supposedly after seeing a ghost.

But, now in turn, a ghost he had become.

The one I had always known deep inside was there with me without even catching glimpse of him once.

I continued walking forward, making my way towards him and he looked at me with an expression that seemed to express the same feelings that were making my own soul jolt as if it suddenly wanted to separate from my body and join the man coming to me in fine garb that made mine appear all the more cheap.

"Are you real?" I asked, halting a foot away from the male with the dark shortly cut hair and the sad, haunted, and above all else, lonely eyes.

The ghost leaned forward, close to my neck. I saw his mouth open and I saw for the first time him breathe on my neck instead of feeling it alone. "It _was_ you...I had not lost my mind," I stated and earned another breath on my neck.

There were things I might have asked him. Why I could see him now? How long we had together? But they would not take breaths for him to give me their answer and Heaven held his tongue preventing him from giving me anything more.

I watched as Hamlet suddenly walked to his grave and pointed to his name and then to himself. He then pointed to me in question. Smiling, I realized he was asking for my name, never having spoke it in his presence before. "Erin," I said. "The name I was given and am known by is Erin, dear Hamlet."

He nodded in approval.

I went to my knees before him and tried to grasp his hand but it was mere vapor, something not to be held but rather some substance made of cloud and the breath he kept giving me. I wondered for the briefest of spells what his full lips would feel on my neck and not just his breath alone. But we were separated by life and death and such an act of simple touch was not allowed incase each became tainted with the other. The morose Prince looked at me in regret and I saw in his eyes my loneliness and sorrow.

"We need not touch nor talk for the friendship to continue to exist between us," I said, holding my hand close to the heart, beneath both my night dress and flesh. "For you were with me even though I could not see you. Or am I mistaken?"

Once again, he leaned forward to breath upon my neck a single time.

"Fine," I smiled. "Now let us give thanks to Heaven for what we have been blessed with and not linger our attention on that which we have not."

My smile was returned under the light of the moon and I found myself extinguishing the lantern, suddenly afraid of the fire and wanting to depend solely on the beautiful glow of my companion for light.

* * *

We spent many a night together, roaming the cemetery or lying on the cool grass where Hamlet's body lay contained while his spirit went wandering more freely. Sometimes I fell asleep there and would awake to find my ghost having gone from my sight. Whenever I would fear he was trapped in some fiery Hell, I would comfort myself in the remembrance of his breath on my neck and that he was simply close by, the sun simply stealing his visage from me for the day was more jealous than the night when it came to sharing its light. My Prince was a ghost, the moon brought me his sight and in moonbeams and night air we played at friendship and chaste love, though, I knew his heart belonged to his beloved and lost Ophelia.

* * *

If we could but have existed with each other only, or if human hearts were more faithful or kind, Hamlet and I might have continued in bliss. But while I tried my best to keep my nighttime excursions to myself, my behaviour began to be noticed by the other servants. Whispers began to be heard behind my back and glimpses of odd glances could I catch if I was in time and moved my head quick enough.

"The girl has gone mad!" I heard stated once as I was about to turn a corner in the castle. "She is up all night and seen talking to herself! She comes in in the morning covered in dew and dirt and the guards say she often lies on Prince Hamlet's grave, as if she were facing a lover and they were lying with one another."

"Do you suppose she has caught his disease of the mind?" the other man spoke to his friend, the son of the King's jester.

"Perhaps it is so...maybe tis a wind in Elsinore which bestows a certain madness on those so inclined. In any case, something must be done about it eventually...The sons of King's can be forgiven their insanity; the daughters of peasants shall not."

* * *

"They are saying I am mad," I told Hamlet that night when I went to him. Our bodies were lying on the ground by his grave once more and at my words a look of alarm alighted in his dark, eyes. "They cannot see you but they do see me and my coming to you. There is talk of what they will do to me..."

Tears were falling from my eyes and when he went to catch them on his fingers they fell through it as only a coldness touched my cheek.

"Some say my skin should be flayed, other say there is a place where women whom have lost their minds are safely kept...but I cannot bear the thought of being so far from thee, my precious Hamlet."

His eyes met mine with deepest affection but I saw behind them the workings of his thoughts towards some action I would not accept.

* * *

Every night afterwards, when I searched for my ghost, he was never to be found. Like a person whom had truly gone mad, I called for him amidst the community of stones and unseen skeletons but could never catch even the swiftest sight of my glowing spectre. I would return to the castle, weeping and utterly lost and now the talk became more heated regarding what should be done with me for the quality of my work in scrubbing floors, cleaning drapery and doing dishes was suffering and this could not be overlooked or grace bestowed upon me despite my desolate state.

One day, Brunhille, the woman of around my size whom had entrusted me with her dishes that one day long ago in the kitchen, pushed me up against the stone wall in annoyance after I returned from the cemetary. No more breaths were felt against my neck during the daylight now either and I was beyond desperate, feeling abandoned completely by my ghost and the old black Tom having died two days before, as well.

"Look! Thou may have lost thine mind but thee still needst to do thine work!"

"But I haven't!" I cried in protest.

"No, thou work has not been done! Ye are quite right about that!"

"No! I have not lost my mind!"

She snickered in bitterness. "Out half the day calling for a long dead, insane Prince. Do ye see ghosts, child? Have you gone quite as mad as the Dane, himself?"

I nodded and bit my lip, desiring to be together with my lost Hamlet in reputation if no longer in anything else. "I have seen him, yes."

Brunhille's eyes became wide in shock and she backed away, afraid that whatever disease of the mind I had caught would soon find its way to her. She looked at the hands which with she had grabbed me and appeared to wish them burnt to save her from such madness. Having no flame nearby she wiped them on the apron wrapped around her waist and then looked at me with terror. "Thee are mad! Something should be done about this! I shall tell the others and tonight we shall knock sense into thy skull once more."

Crying still, I ran to my small and solitary quarters to seek comfort in my bed. No other servant girl shared it with me now, all of them fearing my ailment was contagious too. Before I threw myself on a bed of hay and straw, raised on wood of ancient oak, I ran to the window.

"HAMLET!" I cried out in agony upon a world of gray. "TRUE KING OF DENMARK! RETURN TO ME AND SAVE ME FROM THE SHADOWS!"

* * *

It was when moonlight had fallen that I opened eyes made sore from a flood of tears to see Hamlet staring down at me. His eyes were filled with the same melancholia and his loneliness had come to haunt him strongly since our parting.

"You left me," I accused and guilt flashed over his face like sunlight on the shining blade of a sword which had been unsheathed. "It does not matter," I hastily assuaged incase he left me once again. "You have found me. Now come and lay beside me, dark Prince."

I moved my plump body over on the bed, permitting him space and Hamlet crawled in beside me, the moonlight finding him and permitting me to see him most clearly.

"My heart has been broken," I whispered, lying on my back as the ghost gazed down at me in repentance. "Please help in its healing."

Undoing the laces at the top of my night dress, boldly I opened it to reveal my large breasts to the Dane. Though his eyes confessed shyness at first, they soon turned to betray a certain desire and he lowered his head to breathe twice where my heart would be. His chilled breath travelled to my teat,which suddenly became hard. Eyeing it, Hamlet's hand went to touch the pink bit of flesh and the cold made it become even more erect as an opposing warmth spread between my legs. I moaned, arousal taking hold of me and the spirit of the Prince of Denmark lowered his head to my breast to try to kiss something he could never truly touch.

It was during this intimate act of our reunion and comfort that a group of my fellow servants in the castle burst in and found me lying half naked in a peasant's bed with the spirit of the royal Prince Hamlet. I knew from their expressions that they saw him as clearly as I did, his face above my naked breasts, in our first shared sexual moment; one they had interrupted to heal me of my insanity.

"Tis really a ghost!" the thin dishwasher Hortense cried and quickly fainted.

"She lies with it!" Brunhille, her companion, shouted and pointed at Hamlet and I lying together in such unwholesome manner.

"SHE IS A WITCH!" a man cried.

"NO!" I screamed back, being true to my Lord. The denial fell on ears which denied in return to hear it.

The portion of hatred allotted to any fear overpowered their terror and soon my fellow servants pounced upon me on my bed, disregarding the phantom they had believed that I had conjured through dark magic. As they dragged me away, Hamlet trying in vain to fight them off, my hand reached for his in the dying moonlight. He grasped back frantically, trying to take mine in return but, as before and like always, we found touch betwixt us forbidden and my hand went through his to find only the shaft of the day's first sunlight, which stole my love from out my sight entirely.

* * *

Screaming like the madwomen they believed me to be, I was pushed and dragged down the long flight of stairs in the castle which had witnessed adultery, treason, fratricide and murder. When my struggling seemed too much, a man grabbed a sword off the wall and turned it on me to make me compliant. My cry pierced the metal from knowledge that it had been Hamlet's own once, the same one he had battled Laertes with on the day of both men's death and King Hamlet's finally won vengeance, a revenge which had cost his son his own life. The sword pressed into my back, I could no longer fight them without causing my own demise. Self slaughter and damnation was not something I was willing to commit so I let them take me where they planned.

Under morning sun, I was brutally shoved and pulled to the place where I had first met my ghost and weeping, I was tied to the marker I had once cleaned with my dirty and torn dress. In purest horror, I watched as they piled wood and twigs at my feet in preparation to burn me as the heretic they saw me as.

"BURN THE WITCH!" they chanted as one without reason or compassion.

I tried to move them with my eyes and the tears falling from them, as rapidly as the pleas emerging from my mouth. But neither tear nor word would halt them and I watched helplessly as the kindle was lit and the blaze started. The thought that the sexual heat I had felt from at the ghost's breath and attempted touch would be fittingly punished by a more real fire was interrupted when I felt a cold presence go through me and stall the flame.

"Hamlet," I whispered.

"She calls her demon lover!" Brunhille shouted. "Look he protects her!"

Her words held half truth. Though the flames were consuming the wood beneath my feet, neither my night dress nor my body were being eaten in such a similar fashion. The coldness of the ghost was keeping me safe from the kiss of the fire kindled for my destruction.

"Can it withstand holy steel?" the Jester's son cried amidst the crowd. I saw the morning sun glinting on the sword as he ran towards me, Hamlet's own sword aimed straight at the heart which belonged to no other man save its owner.

I cried out in expectation of the pain that the ghost could not save me from this time. The sword pierced my heart, the blood stopped its flow thoughout my thick frame and the scream I heard before my own suddenly ended was a man's deep voice, crying my name over and over again in mourning. The world of shadows before me, the jeering, unkind faces were swallowed by the gray which darkened to black and then the rest was silence.

* * *

I was being held in an embrace, by arms warm and not cold as I struggled to finally see again. When I opened my eyelids, which felt both light as air and yet more heavy with existence than I had previously believed before, I looked up to see Hamlet, my Hamlet's, crying face. His colors were no longer of glowing light but solid and of flesh. I reached up to caress his wet cheek and discovered I could. "I can touch you," I whispered.

"Yes," Hamlet replied softly. "You are dead, Erin. Humans cannot change though decades separated your birth from mine. They saw you as mad for seeing ghosts and then they saw you as damned when they saw that you could. Nothing proves as difficult to alter as the prejudice of man."

Shifting in his arms, I looked behind us and saw the charred remains of the husk that had once held the soul I was now solely. Most of my crowd of murderers had gone but a few were taking my corpse away for burial in a pauper's grave and leaving the ashes of wood which remained. My burning had charred the grave marker of Hamlet and I longed to clean it as I had the day I had found it.

The Prince of Denmark ran soft fingers through my hair and gazed at me in regret and pity. "It seems my plans all fall through, sweet and precious friend. When I sought to avenge my father I caused the deaths of many without intention. And when, in my loneliness, I found myself attracted to a girl whom once showed me kindness, I could only end up causing her death just as the woman I loved before her. Please give me thy forgiveness..."

"Always. But why did you leave me, dear sweet Hamlet?" I asked, stroking his face gently and believing I could never grow weary of the touch now that Heaven finally allowed it.

"To save you," he replied. "But it was of no use...I doomed you by not being able to stay away. One glimpse meant to be stolen while you slept proved to be your end...Cursed I was alive and cursed within the grave."

"Twas such a fleeting sorrow," I reassurred him. "And worth the suffering to be in your arms now."

Hamlet held me tightly for a few moments and then let me go, rising to walk away from me in obvious pain. His back was facing me as I sat in a dress of gold on grass which suddenly seemed green and not gray. I saw a sky that was a shade that caused a deep glow inside the soul that was all I was to be now above us. I heard birds singing sweetly and saw even the beauty of a crow brought close by the scent of my death. Each leaf on a tree was special and marked, never to be forgotten. Everything was alive and beautiful; while living I had not been able to see its majesty for the cruelty of man had dulled it in my sight. Free now, I could see it for what it was: a creation from God. And in this world, no longer of shadows and pain, Hamlet stood at its core and made all the other miracles seem pale somehow still.

"Heaven calls you," the man professed. "I cannot go. God is more merciful than expected, but Ophelia, in her doubt, would not move forward. I found her wandering and too lost to accept Heaven's invitation. I professed my love to her and in my regret played that I would stay here in her place. I must wait for a time here on earth until a feeling of penance is made within her heart. There have been but two comforts for me in all that time: that she rests in paradise and that I met a girl named Erin, she whom brought me some momentary peace from my melancholia and the shadows she saw the world made of as well."

I saw a bright light full of beauty open in the sky over me and I knew then that should I want my soul was weightless enough to float to it without trouble.

Yet the heaviness in my heart at the thought made it unthinkable.

"If you don't mind," I said, as I rose in ghostly form and walked slowly towards my Hamlet. "I think that I would rather stay here. Before the world was joyless to me. The brightest thing I had ever seen was a ghost whom breathed once on my neck for no and twice for yes. Yet, even now when I see things more clearly, and Heaven beckons me with its splendours and lack of shadows, I fear, nothing still feels as real as you or God has made nothing as beautifully haunting for me within it as my one and special ghost. If I go to it and find my heart lonesome without you, how can there be any salvation or hope left for me? Do not ask me to receive the damnation God, in his love, spared Polonius' daughter from."

His warm, brown eyes were filling with tears while the corner of his mouth curled, one of the few times I had ever been blessed to see it.

"So, I must ask thee...can I keep you company, my one and dearest friend, if you could ever love me as much as you did Ophelia?"

My fellow ghost held out his hand to me and when I reached for it, my hand could finally take hold of it, our fingers linking like our fates. With passionate force, Hamlet pulled me into his embrace, his soft lips finding my neck and kissing it twice with the whole of his no longer lonely spirit.

**Author's Note:**

> Keanu, do you remember that show "Just Like Mom"? Remember how they'd do that big baking thing at the end with the cookies? How the kids would bake some and it would be up to Mom to figure out which cookies their kid had baked for them? I always thought it was so gross how most of the kids put ketchup, mustard and other gross stuff in their cookies. I used to tell my mom that if we were ever on it, my cookies would be the ones without all that stuff. 
> 
> I always wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese's. What would you have put in the cookies you made? You'd a been too old by then but I bet you would have gone for the condiments right? I thought so.
> 
> What do you think Hamlet would have put in Queen Gertrude's cookies? Some people say that Hamlet wanted to eat his mother's cookies but we won't get into that. :/
> 
> All kidding aside, though, I wish I could take you to Chuck E Cheese's for your Birthday. I never did get to go to one and I was always curious. We could have fun together and lie to the waitress or waiter that we were just waiting for our kid to show up. 
> 
> Or we could be honest and just say that we were young at heart. 
> 
> Much love,  
> Erin  
> XO XO  
> :D <3
> 
> P.S. I hope you get to play Macbeth one day too. ;D <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Playing Hide and Seek with a Ghost](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28417617) by [MistyBeethoven](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistyBeethoven/pseuds/MistyBeethoven)




End file.
